Narration
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration encompasses a set of techniques through which the creator of the story presents their story, including: *'Narrative point of view': the perspective (or type of personal or non-personal "lens") through which a story is communicated *'Narrative voice': the format (or type presentational form) through which a story is communicated *'Narrative time': the grammatical placement of the story's time-frame in the past, the present, or the future A narrator is a personal character or a non-personal voice that the creator (author) of the story develops to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot. The narrator may be a voice devised by the author as an anonymous, non-personal, or stand-alone entity; as the author herself/himself as a character; or as some other fictional or non-fictional character appearing and participating within their own story. The narrator is considered participant if he/she is a character within the story, and non-participant if he/she is an implied character or an omniscient or semi-omniscient being or voice that merely relates the story to the audience without being involved in the actual events. Some stories have multiple narrators to illustrate the storylines of various characters at the same, similar, or different times, thus allowing a more complex, non-singular point of view. Narration encompasses not only who tells the story, but also how the story is told (for example, by using stream of consciousness or unreliable narration). In traditional literary narratives (such as novels, short stories, and memoirs), narration is a required story element; in other types of (chiefly non-literary) narratives, such as plays, television shows, video games, and films, narration is merely optional. Narrative point of view First-person Second-person Third-person Narrative voice The narrative voice describes how the story is conveyed: for example, by "viewing" a character's thought processes, reading a letter written for someone, retelling a character's experiences, etc. Stream-of-consciousness voice Character voice Unreliable voice Epistolary voice Third-person voices The third-person narrative voices are narrative-voice techniques employed solely under the category of the third-person view. Third-person, subjective Third-person, objective Third-person, omniscient Narrative time The narrative tense or narrative time determines the grammatical tense of the story; whether in the past, present, or future. Past tense The events of the plot are depicted as occurring sometime before the current moment or the time at which the narrative was constructed or expressed to an audience. Present tense The events of the plot are depicted as occurring now — at the current moment — in real time. In English, this tense, known as the "historical present", is more common in spontaneous conversational narratives than in written literature. A recent example of this is the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Future tense Rare in literature, this tense portrays the events of the plot as occurring some time in the future. Often, these upcoming events are described such that the narrator has foreknowledge (or supposed foreknowledge) of the future. Some future-tense stories have a prophetic tone. Other narrative modes Fiction-writing mode Narration has more than one meaning. In its broadest sense, narration encompasses all forms of storytelling, fictional or not: personal anecdotes, "true crime", and historical narratives all fit here, along with many other non-fiction forms. More narrowly, however, the term narration refers to all written fiction. In its most restricted sense, narration is the fiction-writing mode whereby the narrator communicates directly to the reader. Other types and uses References Notes Further reading * * * Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Transl. by Jane Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell 1980 (Translation of Discours du récit). * *Mailman, Joshua B. (2013) "Agency, Determinism, Focal Time Frames, and Processive Minimalist Music," in Music and Narrative since 1900. Edited by Michael L. Klein and Nicholas Reyland. Musical Meaning and Interpretation series. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. * Stanzel, Franz Karl. A theory of Narrative. Transl. by Charlotte Goedsche. Cambridge: CUP 1984 (Transl. of Theorie des Erzählens). Category:Fiction Category:Style (fiction) Category:Point of view Category:Narratology Category:Literary concepts Category:Descriptive technique